Cognitive ability: Can it predict work performance?

Cognitive ability has garnered tremendous attention for over a century now.

It has in fact played a prominent part in developmental studies in many ways. Most organizations now consider cognitive ability for recognizing a candidate’s ability for a particular job role.

It is also perceived as a guide of normal development as well as considered as a predictor of future success. Cognitive ability has been significant in developmental and adult psychology for decades.

Cognitive ability test has an edge over other popular measures such as personality assessments and job interviews. The analytical validity of cognitive aptitude tests simplifies across job types and settings.

This means that these tests are practical predictors of jobs in most industries. Their capability to envisage job performance is strongest for more complex roles.

Scientific studies are unanimous about one fact: problem-solving skills are excellent indicators of on-the-job performance. However, cognitive skills become crucial for job performance if a position requires coping with complexity and solving abstract problems.

The connection connecting cognitive skills and performance is yet more pertinent where an employee has widespread experience in a position. If one employee learns sooner than another with the same experience, there are bright chances that that person will perform better. This makes it important to measure these skills even when a candidate has a sound technical background and a vast experience.

Cognitive skills also help a recruiter know that how fast a person familiarize himself to a new job and incorporates the knowledge connected to the position. The really critical issue is whether cognitive scores calculate individual differences in the apparently more self-determining measure of job performance.

In dissimilarity with the poise found in minor reports, even a superficial scrutiny of the main sources shows that they are extremely diverse in terms of data quality and reliability.

Cognitive tests involve often-small samples and different measures usually obtained under difficult practical constraints that lets a candidate express his intelligent side. The combined result mostly arises from an amalgamation of various tests comprising cognitive tests.

Lastly, though cognitive skills can envisage work performance, this should not be the only measure used to settle on the fit between a person’s profile and the job.

There is no doubt that the more complex a job is, the more skills it will need to perform well and cognitive assessment comes handy for determining this.